The huge mobile phone gags and lingering shots of whizzy computers suggest Oliver Stone's return to Wall Street is less a chastened retake on greed being good than another wholescale buy-in, says Anna Pickard

When people think of movies that sum up a decade - or not just that: an attitude and a fixed point in time where capitalism was not only aspirational but hotter than a pair of polyester pants with in-built hot water bottle patches - they turn to Wall Street. It is absolutely of its age. Which was 1987.

But now we have Wall Street 2. A film, it seems, also of that age. But set now. It's hard to understand from this trailer how they're expecting that to pan out.

It's teaser trailer, yes. And while we might have hoped there'd be reference to the previous film, we weren't really expecting the entire plot to be spelt out. Of course not. We expected a tease. But this is a weird tease.

All that is promised here, really, is the same bullish stockmarket culture that was the focus of the first film …

… transferred to a different, magical, computer-led age.

And, what the trailer editor seems most keen on showing us, the fact that: yes! Look! Michael Douglas has returned to Hollywood!

Like we'd all been sitting around missing him. And talking about how great it would be if he made a return to Hollywood. Albeit a return looking like a giant testicle wearing a skin-coloured turtleneck top. And an armadillo uniform.

But, apart from the great excitement of Michael Douglas returning to the screen, what can we hope for? I mean, it's a lovely touch that the possessions returned to him post-prison is an enormous 1987 version of a mobile phone …

Which should (if we're old enough) remind us of the original trailer …

And that's hilarious - or would be if this was from a director that planned to make this whole movie into a list of Hot Tub Time Machine-style gags (crikey, that's a more influential cinematic event than I ever might have guessed) about how technically inept the 80s were and just how brilliant and enlightened and different and cooler we are now. In retrospect.

But I have the feeling that's not really the aim of this film. It's not actually going to be a trail of legwarmer gags and synthesizer nostalgia (or "synthestagia"), because it strikes you that Oliver Stone wouldn't really be interested in making a movie about "how crazy batwing sweaters were" or "it being so hard to tell the difference between boys and girls with all that hair and makeup".

And that seems right. It would seem by the looks on their faces this is a serious movie. About serious things. Look at Shia! He is very serious.

And that's all we have when it comes to suggesting there might be a plot at all, let alone one alluding to a possible plot: Shia LaBeouf scowling.

And that's not an indication of plot. It's not an indication of anything at all. The fact is that where there was a driving motivational power behind Wall Street the first time around, The emphasis on character rather than plot here is a dangerous plan for the studio.

Yes: Gordon Gekko was cool then. But a lot of your audience have been fired by him in the last year and perhaps this might not be the best time to expect them to go and see a film about struggling. That's why redundancy drama Up in the Air's been big this year - it wasn't perfect, but it did address the situation many people watching it found themselves in (or at least worried about). But this?

It just looks like nothing more like a huge-scale celebration of everything that was in the last movie and, in fact, of the movie itself. And wooh! Michael Douglas is back making movies!

That's all this trailer is promising.

And that's a damnable shame. Because it's Oliver Stone. And a couple of bankable actors: one classic, one blockbuster. And that should mean there's a winning combination here - if only this looked like a financial sector movie that spoke as much of this time as the first Wall Street did of that one.

And there is no suggestion in this first trailer that that will be the case.